Life Lessons Learned

Reveille: A story of survival, war, family
(Unpublished historical fiction novel about a New Orleans orphan who served as a drummer boy with the Ninth Connecticut Regiment. The teenager was my great-grandfather.)

Chapter 12

"There are endless sufferings to endure
and endless lessons to learn."
Chinese proverb

Downtime in the winter camp was an invitation for creative thinking for many of the men of the Ninth. Around roaring campfires – shortly after breakfast call to taps, between must-drills, other chores, foraging, finding, gathering, and splitting wood – the men talked or played card games (some with rules, others made up on the spot). They rolled bones for money (real and imagined), talked of their past and future lives, and made up tall tales for the sheer entertainment value.

Charles didn’t often join in the games. Too many of the games demanded talking – bidding, over-bidding, being asked seemingly innocuous questions. The talk was mostly benign early in the day, but seemed to turn malignant and dark as livers floating in foul-smelling liquor when darkness descended. Offered a drink of “plum punch” on a lazy evening in the late fall, Charles took a tentative sip, then a healthy swig, smacked his lips loudly, and within minutes . . . was praying for a quick death.

The “punch,” concocted of plums gone bad and allowed to ferment in a wayward canteen, then cut with grain alcohol snagged from the hospital tent when the surgeons and assistants were at mess, and sassafras root, was like “drinking the Devil’s piss,” one soldier cried as his stomach tied itself in knots.

But, if the intent of the elixir was to graduate its partakers from sober to drunk in eye-blink time, it was a fine brew indeed.

Charles held his stomach as if he expected his guts to fall out in a cascade on the cold ground. Trying to focus eyes that seemed to be trying to meet each other at his nose, Charles floundered out of the campfire light. He made his way into a nearby pin cushion of oak saplings, and promptly puked. When his stomach was drained, he dry-heaved for what seemed longer than Job endured his trials. His guts in a twist, Charles groaned, cursed silently, cursed loudly, and screamed at man and God for relief.

A friendly soldier who had passed on the potent potion – “I done had it onest ‘while back and that were ‘nuff.” – half-carried, half-dragged Charles to the hospital tent, roused a sleeping hospital steward, and asked for his assistance. The man – August Ruhl, a former rifleman from Norwich who was a recent transfer to surgeon aide detail – took a long look at Charles, shook his head and said, “This ‘un he’ll have to pay for. The cure may be worser than the ailment.”

Ruhl walked to the backside of the tent and after rummaging around a spell in a large, plain, pine chest, produced a great dark bottle with a wooden stopper. Using his teeth, he extracted the stopper, which he spat on a nearby table. Charles, in severe pain and feeling he was going to pass out any minute, never took his eyes off the bottle swaying at the end of the man’s long arm.

“What . . . is . . . it?” he asked with gulping breaths.

“Ipecac. It’ll clear you right up, most probably.”

Ruhl put the wooden stob on a nearby table before pushing the bottle’s mushroom lips to Charles’ mouth. “Hold his nose,” the steward said to the soldier, “then grab his arms. He’s gonna fight some, most probably.”

“Fight?” Charles said, “Why wo . . . “

Ruhl quickly pinched his Adam’s apple as the soldier grabbed his nose. A large glug of the dark, sticky liquid slid down Charles’ throat.

In spite of his best efforts, he coughed, sputtered, tried to spit, and then swallowed. His taste buds initially refused to register the taste but when they did . . . Charles felt his stomach roil once, twice, then a upside down waterfall of ipecac and bile came up twice as fast as it went down.

Once, twice . . . five times, Charles’ body tried to turn itself inside out as the two men held him down and did funny, side-step dances to avoid the spewings.

When the series of incredible tidal waves of cramps had passed, Charles was awash in a swooning sweat. He fell down on the long table and was passing into blessed unconsciousness when he said, “Why did you give me . . . that? I had already throwed up?”

“You have to get the poison out, boy, or you will feel real bad for a long time. That’s what ipecac does. Cleans you out.”

There’s gotta be a better way to go about it than poisonin’ a fellow.

His last thought was partially lost in the slamming darkness:

How do them other fellas . . . ?



The next day, well after reveille, Charles woke up. Or tried to. Then wished he hadn’t. His head was a cannonball pressuring up about to explode. He had apparently slept in a tight ball due to on-and-off stomach cramps; the muscles in his back, legs, neck, and arms were tight.

As tight as Dick’s hatband. And sore . . . Oh, God! . . . to boot.

Ruhl hovered nearby. “How’re you feelin’?”

“Better than last night. But then, I was about to die, so anythin’ has to be better, oui?”

“Oui, yes, and surely.”

Charles was quiet for a spell, thinking. “So, bein’ a surgeon and all, you know a lot of medicines and such, right?”

“I’m no surgeon, not even a ‘sistant. I volunteered into the army but wasn’t a very good soldier and knew it. I might want to be a doctor someday after the war. If it ever does end. So I volunteered myself to come over here and help out wherever I can. I could never be a sawbones. Cuttin’s not for me. I know it and the army knows it. But the army needs to have a warm body fillin’ a set slot in the ranks. I do the best I can and that’s all I can do.”

“Do you know medicine? Can you teach me some?” The question was direct, not hesitant; it was bold for Charles, but contained no hint of begging or pleading in his tone or mannerisms.

“You want to be a doctor?”

“Truly? I don’t know. I seem to be goin’ through life findin’ out things I don’t want to be and I want to find somethin’ I do want to be even if I don’t know what the somethin’ is just yet.”

Ruhl paused, staring at Charles, studying him. “Hmmmm. That sounds like a right smart plan, when you get right down to it.”